No All Film Passes at 2024 Anchorage International Film Festival (AIFF2024) And Other Issues

 I've been covering AIFF since 2006.  Pretty extensively for many years, less vigorously in recent years.  This year will probably be the sketchiest.  [After writing the rest of the post, I realized that because of huge gaps in the AIFF websites compared to recent years, I probably need to do more.  We'll see what my schedule and energy level will allow]

The festival board hired two film makers from California to run the festival ths year.  They've had films in our festival in the past and liked it here.  I was excited and ready to cover the films that are coming.  

I checked the website and had some questions.  

1.  Are there no all film passes this year?

2.  How do I search to find a list of countries different films come from?

There were some other issues - like finding easy links to learn more about individual films.  There is a giant mosaic with pictures from all - I think - the films.  When you click one, you get more about that film.  But I couldn't find any pattern - dates, types, etc.  While some have the film name in the picture, for most you're just randomly guessing based on that one picture.  And then shorts that were part of programs - when I searched by their names - just got me to the program, but nothing more than the name of the film.  

My first email to the festival directors got a warm, enthusiastic response, which confirmed that there were no all film passes.  Instead there are 'badges' if you donate $100 or buy $100 worth of tickets.  Well the first 100 people to spend $100.  

My second email which lamented, fairly strongly, the lack of passes, and which asked if the website person could switch on 'countries' so we can search films by the  countries they come from, and mentioned that I was having trouble finding information about individual shorts, was never responded to.  

So, regular film festival attendees, here's why I find these issues problematic.  

Passes

1.  Price:  There have been festival all-film passes since I started going regularly back in 2006.  The price has gone up slightly over the years, but has been a great way to see the films at the festival with minimum hassle and at a great price.  

The passes last year were, if I remember correctly, about $120.  That got you into all the films.  

Going through the daily events calendar this year, I count 43 events. (I see that Demon Box is free and I'm not sure how may others are).  And some are timed so you'd miss the end of one or the beginning of the next one. Or there are two films playing at the same time.  Not sure if any are shown a second time.  The directors did say that the last film was sold out already and they were looking to show it again.  So say someone goes to 35 events.  At $12 per ticket, that's over $400.  And that doesn't include a $1.50 booking charge (more than 10% of the ticket price) when you buy online.  

So, the most loyal AIFF fans, the ones who get all films passes, are facing an almost 400% increase in fees, plus the inconvenience of now having to book each film.  I'm hoping that, in fact we'll be able to get our tickets at the venue.  

2.  Time - Buying a pass meant you could just go to all the films.  You didn't have to individually buy tickets on-line.  You didn't have to look everything up in advance to figure out which movies you wanted to see.

Going thru and ordering tickets one by one online is a real time consumer, which happened when I bought tickets for the opening night feature at the Bear Tooth.  It appears that on Goelevent at least there is a chance to put films in your cart and buy them at a time in checkout.  Getting rid of the passes just adds hassle for the folks who are the biggest AIFF fans.  That includes people who come from out of town to 'do' the festival.

At the Bear Tooth, in the past, you also had to make specific reservations to be sure you got a seat.  At other venues there was always the chance a program was sold out, but that happened only rarely.  

3.  Festival Culture - I'm not sure how many passes were sold each year, but I'm guessing at least 100.  Those folks got to know each other because they ran into one another at so many films.  They populated films that otherwise would have had one or two, or zero viewers.  The new badges are being promoted as VIP status symbols. [And you have to click the popup to get rid of it each time you open the site.] I know for myself and most of the other regular all-film pass holders, the pass was merely a convenience, not a status symbol.  OK, for some maybe they liked others to see them wearing a pass, but for most of us, it was more like wearing a team sweatshirt than a status symbol.  

If money is the issue - though it seems that hasn't been a serious issue in the past - then the price of passes could have been increased.  Even to $200.  And most of us would have paid without a serious gripe.  But eliminating the passes raises the entry fee enormously for former pass holders, forces us to spend more time picking films and buying tickets each time, and is something of a slap in the face to the most loyal festival goers.  

I don't know who was consulted before this decision was made, but it's a huge change for a core group of loyal festival attendees.  

This is just a big change in the culture of the festival. 

Search Options

1.  Being able to click on a film name and get to learn about the films.  There were various ways you could do this in the past.  But not this time.  

First, you need to realize there are two different (but linked) websites.  One is the AIFF site.  The other is Goelevent AIFF pages.  Goelevent is a national organization that specializes in websites and ticket sales for film festivals.  

Below is the schedule of events for Saturday Dec. 7th. [This is on the Goelevent site] There are names of films, but they aren't linked to a page where you can see more about the film to decide if you want to watch it.  You'll have note the names of the films and go back and search each particular film.  

But there is no search function on the Anchorage International Film Festival site.  You have to switch over to the Goelevent page for AIFF to search and even get to the page above.   

You get there by clicking on Purchase Tickets on the main AIFF page.  

But that doesn't work for films in the shorts programs.  (Shorts are grouped into programs, so you see 5-10 or more film in one sitting.)

Here's the page for the Animation Shorts.  There's a list in tiny print of the films.  But no links.  And in the case of the shorts, if you search, say "Just Da Orange" under films, you get 

"No events found matching your criteria. Please adjust your search."

Notice how there really aren't any extra spaces between the words.  You have to guess where one title ends and the next begins.  For most, it's fairly obvious, but not all.  I'd note that in Thai, the words run together without spaces in between.  Kind of tough for people learning to read in Thai.  That's what this reminded me of.  

And there are no links.  

I could find no information on the shorts themselves.  

This takes us back to the dark ages when the festival website didn't tell you much.  But the festival director who was in change of the website in those days jumped on any suggestions I made to make it easier for folks to use the website.  

In those days, there was a lot more work for a blogger like me to do, to let people know about what films were available, which ones to see, when etc.  But a lot of that - including trailers of most of the films - were posted on recent AIFF websites.  I didn't have to gather all that myself any more, to post on my blog.  

And I got spoiled because I didn't have to work so hard.  But here we are again.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do this year.  

Searching by Country

Compared to the other issues listed above, this seems like a minor issue.  But for many people, the films are opportunities to learn about different cultures, to see films that take place in countries they've traveled to, or lived in, or come from.  There are over 100 languages spoken in the homes of  Anchorage School District students.  

Every year I've been doing posts that highlighted the countries that films come from.  That will be much harder to do this time.  Not sure I'll manage without the search by country plugged in.  

By knowing that there are films in their language, they can come to the festival and enjoy their own culture.  Granted that streaming sites like Netflix offer films from many different countries now, but it's different in a theater.  

Can't do this this year.  Two years ago I sent an email to John, the festival director who did oversight over the website, and asked why I couldn't search by country that year.  Within 20 minutes he emailed back and said, "You can now.  I turned it on."

That's it folks.  This is my film festival gripe post.  Actually, it's a feedback post to the festival directors on how to make the festival work better.  I realize it's too late to reinstate festival passes, but the fixes to the website are critical to making it easier for people to navigate, find out about the films, before buying tickets.  Past directors welcomed my testing the website so they could fix it, which is my purpose.  

But now I realize there's a lot of work for me to do to help fans figure out what films to see.  It's more like the old days.  But my life is busier than it has been for a while.  And I'm no longer willing to stay up until 3am writing posts each day.  

But the president of the festival board assures me there are great films to be seen and I'll do what I can to figure out which ones they are and let you know.